Flag day on Yom Yershalim is back regardless of all the Arab threats and bluster and Florida Gov. DeSantis Awards Prosecutor of Nuremberg Trials with Medal of Freedom and Felix Mendelssohn’s Ambiguous Religious Identity: Jew, Christian, Or Both? By Saul Jay Singer and A Look Back At The Pollard Fiasco
Yehuda Lave is an author, journalist, psychologist, rabbi, spiritual teacher, and coach, with degrees in business, psychology and Jewish Law. He works with people from all walks of life and helps them in their search for greater happiness, meaning, business advice on saving money, and spiritual engagement.
Flag Day is back on Yom Yershalim regardless of all the Arab threats and bluster
The Three Musketeers at the Kotel
The Three are Rabbi Yehuda Glick, famous temple mount activist, and former Israel Mk, and then Robert Weinger, the world's greatest shofar blower and seller of Shofars, and myself after we had gone to the 12 gates of the Temple Mount in 2020 to blow the shofar to ask G-d to heal the world from the Pandemic. It was a highlight to my experience in living in Israel and I put it on my blog each day to remember.
The articles that I include each day are those that I find interesting, so I feel you will find them interesting as well. I don't always agree with all the points of each article but found them interesting or important to share with you, my readers, and friends. It is cathartic for me to share my thoughts and frustrations with you about life in general and in Israel. As a Rabbi, I try to teach and share the Torah of the G-d of Israel as a modern Orthodox Rabbi. I never intend to offend anyone but sometimes people are offended and I apologize in advance for any mistakes. The most important psychological principle I have learned is that once someone's mind is made up, they don't want to be bothered with the facts, so, like Rabbi Akiva, I drip water (Torah is compared to water) on their made-up minds and hope that some of what I have share sinks in. Love Rabbi Yehuda Lave.
It has been over 30 days since the death of Esther Pollard, the beloved wife of Jonathan Pollard. I attended the shloshim at Yeshurun Synagogue in Jerusalem just a few weeks ago, and as leaders of the Jewish people in Israel praised the strengths of this remarkable woman, I was reminded of the past. Finally, after 31 years of hell, and then being saddled with inhumane parole restrictions, Jonathan Pollard was freed and came to Israel – only to face another tragedy in his life, the passing of his beloved wife Esther.
I am sadly reminded of the history of this story and the fight and tragedy of the life of Jonathan Pollard. It is a sad commentary on what happens to people who are motivated to do the right thing and then are punished so severely by people in power. The old adage of "power corrupts" is so evident in this case.
However, this treatment is not new for our people.
At the end of the 19th century there was a famous espionage case involving Alfred Dreyfus. Dreyfus was an officer in the French army and was accused of treason. The entire incident was a "frame-up," but at the time of the charge he was found guilty and stripped of his rank and sent to jail. At a later date he was exonerated and the real culprits were found and punished. This case was a major example of the blatant antisemitism that was prevalent in France, and according to many historians was the seminal reason Theodore Herzl began his campaign to seek a homeland and refuge for the Jewish people – to ensure that this kind of antisemitism would not continue.
In the early 1900s, Mendel Beilis, a Jew, was placed under arrest for allegedly killing a Christian child and using his blood to bake matzot. It was the old "blood libel" accusation that began in the 12th century and over the years raised its ugly head to accuse Jews of this heinous crime. This claim is also written in the blasphemous book The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and has repeatedly been used as proof by avid Jew-haters of the inhumanity of the Jews despite its absurdity and obvious falsity.
After a long and arduous trial and untold suffering endured by Beilis, the case was thrown out and Beilis was acquitted. He nearly died during his two years of incarceration as he waited for trial. The entire incident demonstrated the apparent antisemitism in Czarist Russia and the tremendous challenges that the Jews had to endure during those trying times.
One would think that in the United States, where one's freedom is protected by law, there is no need to worry about antisemitism. Certainly, Jews should feel comfortable that they could not be accused of a crime without having a fair trial, and that no Jew would be given an excessive punishment in comparison to a non-Jew who has committed a similar crime.
When Jonathan Pollard was accused of giving over classified information to a friendly country – Israel – most of the Jewish community were embarrassed. Many leaders disassociated themselves from him and the case, and hoped that he would get "what he deserved."
The case never came to trial. There was a plea bargain with Jonathan which included a promise that he would receive certain leniencies, among them that his wife at the time would be excluded from any punishment. The government at the last moment reneged on its promise, sending both Jonathan and his former wife, Anne, to prison. Jonathan was given the maximum life sentence with no chance of parole. Anne was thrown in jail and suffered greatly because of her medical condition, but was eventually freed after serving five years.
A great deal transpired during that time. Attempts were made to appeal the case and bring it to trial, to petition the president to commute his sentence, to organize a prisoner swap, to send in petitions with thousands of signatures – all to no avail. This, despite the fact that other people who had spied for unfriendly countries were all given much shorter prison terms of prison. Just one example of many: John Walker, who was found guilty of spying for the Soviet Union, an enemy country, was also given a life sentence, but after 18 years he was paroled.
Jonathan was never completely freed until Donald Trump became president. Despite all the influence that our Jewish leaders thought they had and despite the reversal of their opinion from what they believed in the early years of this sad episode – this time supporting Jonathan – they were unable to free him from his unfair imprisonment. It didn't matter that he had admitted his guilt and showed remorse – no one succeeded in giving this man the opportunity to see the light of day.
As I look back, I have great objections to the way the United States government treated this case. I am not excusing Pollard's crime or behavior, but his punishment was excessive and bordered on outright antisemitism. Why was Jonathan not given a "fair shake?" Why didn't he receive parole? What was the government hiding that it refused to allow this man who had suffered so much his freedom?
Equally important to me as a Jew is the question of the status of the Jew in the United States today. I am fearful that the influence and effect of Jews in this country is waning – that the same antisemitism that cropped up in the time of Beilis and Dreyfus is underlying here as well, and that for American Jews, their days are numbered.
Maybe we should all consider aliyah seriously, before it's too late!
Florida Gov. DeSantis Awards Prosecutor of Nuremberg Trials with Medal of Freedom
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis awards Benjamin Ferencz, the last living prosecutor of the Nuremberg trials, with the Governor's Medal of Freedom on April 7, 2022.
A 103-year-old man was awarded the Governor's Medal of Freedom on Thursday by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in recognition of his bravery and determination to see Nazis brought to justice.
The award was presented to Ben Ferencz, the last living prosecutor of the Nuremberg trials, in recognition of his "valiant service during World War II to defeat Nazi Germany and then hold accountable the perpetrators of the Holocaust."
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"Ben Ferencz held the Nazis accountable for the atrocities they committed in perpetrating the Holocaust, and it is because of his work as the chief prosecutor for the United States at the Nuremberg war-crimes trials that we have the fortitude today to say never again will we let a tragedy like the Holocaust occur," said DeSantis. "As the last surviving Nuremberg prosecutor, Ben Ferencz is a living legend, and we are proud that he is a Florida resident."
DeSantis said that in addition to presenting the award, he hoped that it would help "further the legacy of people like Ben. I want kids in our schools to be learning about him 10, 15, 20 years in the future … to make sure that people understand the evils of the Holocaust and the heroism that we see on this stage."
Speaking during the ceremony, Ferencz said that he had hoped by participating in the trials that there would be "a more humane and peaceful world, where no one would be killed or persecuted because of his race or religion or his political beliefs, and I made those statements in my closing arguments where we had 22 defendants convicted after two days of trial. … I tried to build on that to prevent it from happening again."
And yet, he stated, "we see it still happening today you see the pictures of people running with their infant children with hospitals being bombed and we have not yet learned the lesson from Nuremberg, despite the fact that we laid it out clear and unmistakable."
Ferencz implored the audience to talk to young people about the dangers of war and said that society must stop "glorifying war-making."
"We've got to have a change of heart and change in mind," he said. "I work all the time … because I am trying to change the way people think about war. If people don't think about it, their hearts won't change … you have to ask yourself is this how human beings behave?"
Ferencz corrected the governor about his age, saying he was 103, not 102, and also said that he has three words for people to keep in mind: "Law, not war" and "Never give up."
Born in Transylvania in 1920, Ferencz moved to the United States with his parents before his first birthday. He was raised in New York's Hell's Kitchen neighborhood and graduated from Harvard Law School in 1943. During World War II, he served in the U.S. Army and received five battle stars during World War II for bravery on the battlefield.
In his own book, Planethood, Ferencz recounted seeing the horrors of the Nazi concentration camps, writing, "Indelibly seared into my memory are the scenes I witnessed while liberating these centers of death and destruction. Camps like Buchenwald, Mauthausen, and Dachau are vividly imprinted in my mind's eye. Even today, when I close my eyes, I witness a deadly vision I can never forget-the crematoria aglow with the fire of burning flesh, the mounds of emaciated corpses stacked like cordwood waiting to be burned. … I had peered into hell."
Last November, a bipartisan group of the members of the U.S. House of Representatives introduced a bill to award a Congressional Gold Medal to Ferencz.
During the medal ceremony, which was held at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, DeSantis also honored two other Holocaust survivors, Samuel Ron, 97, and Norman Frajman, 92.
Felix Mendelssohn's Ambiguous Religious Identity: Jew, Christian, Or Both?
A page from Moses Mendelssohn's original handwritten manuscript of his translation of Jeremiah. (Note that G-d's name has been redacted from the document to prevent the creation of shemos.)
Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1897) was a musical prodigy who went on to become one of the most gifted and influential musicians of the 19th century. A virtuoso pianist and organist and composer of Romantic music of great beauty, he is credited with restoring the oratorio and with changing the way music was composed, played and heard. The prolific composer created an amazing body of work, particularly given his untimely death at age 38, including four oratorios, symphonies, sacred music, piano compositions, and the beloved violin concerto, a perfect example of the fusion of the classical and romantic forms. His greatest work, however, is arguably Elijah (1846), which many music authorities consider to be the supreme oratorio of all time.
Mendelssohn also played a key role in advancing the fledgling art of conducting (among other things, he was among the first to use a baton) and he enjoyed great success as a conductor at music festivals throughout Europe. He was also polymath fluent in French, English, Italian and ancient Greek; a skilled and talented visual artist; a prolific writer; and an accomplished gymnast, swimmer, and equestrian.
Born into a family of means and privilege, Mendelssohn's own life might aptly serve as a metaphor for the conflicting social attitudes of his era. Understanding his life and work necessitates addressing the fundamental issues of his assimilation, conversion and dual religious identity, beginning with his grandfather, the renowned Moses Mendelssohn, and his father, Abraham.
Moses Mendelssohn (1729-1826), the preeminent Jewish philosopher of the German Enlightenment, was a rabbinic scholar referred to as "the German Socrates." He became best known for his personification of the conflict of the modern Diaspora Jew seeking integration into broader secular society while maintaining a strong commitment to preserving his Jewish identity. The leading fighter for Jewish civil rights in Germany, he used his respect and renown to assist individual Jews and entire communities in disputes with the German authorities and he facilitated the revocation of many antisemitic laws. Though he was a great defender of traditional Judaism in the face of Christian challengers, he undermined it by applying the intense rationalism test of the Haskalah (the Jewish "Enlightenment").
Throughout his life, Felix exhibited great respect and affection for his grandfather, who died 23 years before he was born. Some of his earliest works were based upon Moses' biblical translations; he supported his uncle's efforts to publish a complete edition of Moses' work (albeit behind the scenes); he requested that a plaque be placed at his grandfather's Dessau home; and he was proud to be introduced as the "grandson of Moses Mendelssohn." Some commentators maintain that the themes of the two biblically-inspired oratorios that he composed in the year before his death – Elijah, in which he exhibits strong pride in his Jewish heritage and demonstrates his affection for the Jewish Bible and Jewish tradition, and Christus, in which he manifests his embrace of the New Testament and his affection for his family's Protestant faith – reflect his attempt, conscious or otherwise, to follow in Moses' steps in endeavoring to reconcile the spiritual and religious aspects of his dual identity.
Early Haskalah reformers found in Moses' radical ideas justification for secularism, emancipation and assimilation at the expense of their Judaism, which led to assimilation and to the loss of Jewish identity on a massive scale as Jews concluded that they could retain their Jewish ethnicity while accepting Christianity and adopting German culture. Among the assimilated and converted were four of Moses' six surviving children, two of whom converted to Catholicism and two – including Abraham, Felix's father – joined the Reformed Lutheran church.
After Abraham (1776-1835), a successful banker who founded the Mendelssohn Bank with his uncle, married Lea Salomon, the daughter of a wealthy and prominent German family, in a synagogue ceremony, the couple worked diligently to maintain a strictly secular household and to completely separate the Mendelssohn family from the Jewish community. Felix was not circumcised, there is no record of his ever being given a Hebrew name, and his birth was not listed in the Jewish register of Hamburg births.
Abraham was opposed to all faiths that postulated the existence of the supernatural and, as such, he likely chose Lutheranism because, as the least inflexible of all Christian denominations, it did not constitute a great leap from Reform Judaism, which is little more than Christianity without Jesus. He baptized Felix in the Lutheran Church on March 21, 1816 – ironically, Bach's birthday (Felix played a leading role in the revival of Bach's church music) – when the child was only seven years old but, notably, he did not do so until after his mother (Moses Mendelssohn's wife) died. Abraham and Lea did not themselves convert until six years later, when – manifesting some modicum of shame – they secretly ran off to Frankfurt to be baptized rather than undergoing the rite in Berlin, where they and their Jewish relatives lived. Abraham never advised his mother about his conversion and, when she found out about it, she disinherited him.
Rare postal cover, dated 1846, with return address signed "Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy."
At the suggestion of Lea's brother, himself a Protestant convert, Abraham added the name "Bartholdy" to the centuries-old family name. He would later put tremendous pressure on Felix to cease entirely using the Mendelssohn name; as he explained to Felix in a letter, "There can no more be a Christian Mendelssohn than a Jewish Confucius; if your name is Mendelssohn, you are ipso facto a Jew, and that is of no benefit to you, because it is not even true." Nonetheless, Felix insisted on maintaining the Mendelssohn name and, walking the middle line between respect for his grandfather and obedience to his father, he signed his name as "Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy." (Felix's siblings loathed the name "Bartholdy," his sister Rebekka even going so far as to write her name as "Rebekka Mendelssohn medem ("never" in Greek) Bartholdy."
Not only did Felix never receive any semblance of a Jewish education, he was raised in a family environment where his father disparaged Judaism as an "antiquated, distorted and self-defeating religion and an obstacle to their integration into the wider community" and where he was prohibited any contact with the Jewish community. More significantly, he was raised as a Christian. As Abraham later explained, "I had to choose for you. Given the scant value I place on all religious forms, it goes without saying that I felt no inner calling to choose for you the Jewish, the most obsolete, corrupt and pointless of them all. So I raised you in the Christian, the purer form accepted by the majority of civilized people." On the occasion of the baptism of Felix's sister, Abraham wrote to her that "we have educated you and your brothers and sister in the Christian faith because it is the creed of most civilized people." With that background, there can be little surprise that Felix intermarried with the daughter of a Reform Church clergyman.
The Mendelssohns lived in a very difficult time for Jews, and Abraham made the same "compromise" as many Jewish families did at the time: to convert to Christianity to gain citizenship and public acceptance. The situation was perhaps best described by the great poet, Heinrich Heine, also a Jewish convert, who characterized baptism as the "ticket of admission" into European culture.
However, as has always been true throughout Jewish history and as will undoubtedly be the case in the future until the Messianic era, Jews cannot escape their Jewishness and even baptism cannot remove the "taint" of Judaism; as the Nazis illustrated for all time, a Jew remains a Jew in the eyes of antisemites. As such, Felix's conversion protected neither him nor other "New Jewish Christians" from antisemitism, including that of his "friends" and teachers.
For example, after his baptism, Felix witnessed the 1819 "Hep-Hep" pogroms, in which Germans opposed to Jewish emancipation in the German Confederation murdered Jews and destroyed Jewish property while police stood idly by. A royal prince spat at his feet and exclaimed, "Hep, hep (the pogroms' rallying cry), Jew boy" and he was subjected to antisemitic taunts. Carl Zelter, Felix's early composition teacher, intimated that it would be rare indeed "were the son of a Jew to become a great artist," and his organ teacher, August Bach, responded to Felix's request to play a Bach fugue by testily admonishing "Why does the young Jew need to have everything? He already has enough!"
Old Mendelssohn cigarette card.
Nor did Mendelssohn's conversion benefit his legacy. Although he was idolized by his contemporaries during his lifetime, Richard Wagner effectively destroyed his public stature when, only a year after his death, he published Das Judenthum in Der Music ("Judaism in Music"), a racist and vitriolic essay directed primarily at Mendelssohn, whose work he maintained was derivative and lightweight because he was a Jew. He held Mendelssohn up as an archetype for how even a Jew with great talent and polish was incapable of creating great music, and he played a leading role in persuading the public that Mendelssohn was little more than a hack.
Mendelssohn's reputation was even further eroded by the Nazis, who banned his music and tore down all statues bearing his likeness. In one comical incident, Hitler ordered the removal of the Mendelssohn statue from the roof of the Prague opera house, but the workers mistakenly took down the statue of Richard Wagner, whom they believed to be Jewish because of the size of his nose. It was only after the Holocaust that music scholars began to recognize Mendelssohn's genius and to revive his oeuvre and popularity.
The question of the extent to which Mendelssohn identified with Judaism is still passionately debated, as authorities continue to argue about his self-identification as a Jew, as a Christian convert, or both. Most agree that he believed that Christianity "modernized" Judaism but did not replace it and that his conversion was one of convenience and adaptation rather than religious conviction, but there can be little doubt that he was a committed Christian with strong beliefs in his faith. Nonetheless, he was comfortable acknowledging his Jewish roots; he retained a real sense of his Jewish identity; and his works evidence a high regard for Jewish scripture. He barely mentioned Christianity in his 5,000 letters; in none of them does the name "Jesus" appear; and many of his letters to his family included Yiddish expressions.
The commentators still argue about whether Mendelssohn's music may be properly described as "Jewish." He used the traditional melody for Yigdal arranged by Leon Singer, the cantor at the Great Synagogue in London, in one of his string symphonies, and some contend that many of his other works, including the allegro of the Violin Concerto, are distinctly Jewish. Other authorities propose that his Variations Serieuses were suggestive of a blessing sung by Jews during Passover and that the main motif of the chorus of Section 34 of Elijah ("Behold! [G-d] the [L-rd] has passed by!") uses a melody sung during Yom Kippur services when the Thirteen Attributes of G-d's Divine Mercy are recited and repeated. There is no evidence that he ever entered a synagogue, but some commentators hypothesize that he must have done so, given his apparent familiarity with some of the cantorial prayers.
Original artwork for 1959 Israel Musical Stamp Exhibition cover depicting Mendelssohn with a verse in Hebrew from the composer's Elijah oratorio (Psalms 121:4): "Behold, the Guardian of Israel neither dozes nor sleeps . . ."
Others see Mendelssohn's Psalm 114 ("When the Jews came out of Egypt . . .") as a re-affirmation of his Jewish roots and celebration of the triumph of his forefathers. Still others see in his choral music an attempt to bridge Judaism and Christianity as, particularly after his father's death, he commenced revision of the text of some Christian prayers to deemphasize their antisemitic passages; this is particularly so in the oratorio Elijah, which some see as Mendelssohn's "return to his Jewish roots."
The most clearly "Jewish" of Mendelssohn's works, however, is almost certainly his Die Erste Walpurgisnacht ("The First Walpurgis Night," published in 1843), a German celebration somewhat analogous to Halloween. It was based upon the famous poem of the same name by Goethe, who deeply admired Mendelssohn, had met him several times, and deeply admired his work and compared him to Mozart. Mendelssohn's theme in the piece is the triumph of a subjugated and oppressed people in their occupied land, an unmistakable metaphor for the Jewish condition through Jewish history. He also presents Christianity in a negative light, further underscoring the confusing duality of his religious identity.
Mendelssohn was asked in 1843 by the Jewish Neues Temple, a Reform temple in Hamburg, to set some Psalms to music to mark its 25th anniversary. Temple leaders, who apparently had at least some basis to believe that the composer might accept the project, advised him that it would be most appropriate for him to write music for various Psalms using his grandfather's German translations. Mendelssohn agreed to write a piece for Psalm 100 and he borrowed a copy of Isaac Nathan's Hebrew Melodies, which certainly suggests that he might be considering writing some music specifically on Jewish themes but, for reasons unknown, it never came to be. (Nathan wrote Hebrew Melodies, which used melodies from the synagogue service, for which Lord Byron enthusiastically wrote the lyrics.)
Mendelssohn stamp issued by Israel's postal authority (1996), which features a few bars from the composer's Elijah.
Even today, the public perception of Mendelssohn's faith as Jewish or Christian remains unclear, even to the likes of Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, one of the greatest contemporary antisemites and the man who infamously called Judaism "a gutter religion"; Farrakhan played Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto at a music festival, unaware that the composer was Jewish.
At the end of his life, Mendelssohn was planning to compose an oratorio, Moses, which he unfortunately was unable to complete. His Christian funeral, attended by many admirers, featured a 600-strong chorus singing "Christ and the Resurrection." He was buried in the cemetery of Holy Cross Church in Berlin, and a huge cross marks his grave.
